Martha Murphyopened the door and looked at me from top to bottom, shaking her head. “If you’d have come an hour earlier, I could have put a healthy dinner in you.”
I slid past her. “Good to see you too. I’ll have you know some twenty-two-year-old all but propositioned me today, stimulated entirely by my fabulous physique.”
“Twenty-two? Joe, she was looking for a father figure-probably wanted to feed you some proper food.”
I hung my coat up in the hallway, something I did in this house almost as frequently as I did in my own. “You still worked up over that dinner I served Frank a few weeks ago?”
“Mayonnaise, pickle and Velveeta sandwiches… I mean, really.”
I kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t you ever walk on the wild side?”
“Sure, but I try not to kill myself. You should have seen what that meal did to his system.”
“Hell, that was probably all the scotch he poured on top of it.” That hit a nerve, and I was sorry I’d said it. I patted her shoulder. “Okay, you win. Beans and sprouts from now on.”
She shook her head and sighed. I worked my way back to Frank’s den beyond the kitchen. He was lying on a brown vinyl couch in front of thgn=e television watching the news. There was a tall glass of scotch on the floor by his hand.
“Hi, Joe. You want a drink?”
I shook my head. I’d given up drinking several years ago. Frank knew that, but there’s something inside a hard-drinking man that can only see abstinence as a passing and regrettable phase. And Frank was a hard-drinking man; I’d seen him absorb five stiff scotch-and-sodas and not show a hair out of place. The only visible evidence of his daily drowning was an ever-expanding soft gut and a growing inability to move quickly-physically and mentally. I’d thought about going the same route after my wife Ellen had died many years back, but watching Frank even then had kept me straight. Unfortunately, either despite or because of Martha’s concern, Frank had kept right on going.
“You have any tonic water?”
He lugged himself out of the couch and ambled over to a freestanding bar set up near the wall. “Still on the wagon, huh? I don’t see how you can drink tonic water without something to kill the taste.”
He filled my order, handed me a glass and motioned to the couch. “Take a load off. I’m finding out who was asshole of the day-at least according to the TV. I’ve got my own opinion, of course.”
“John Woll?” Murphy grunted. “That’s not a bad place to start.”
“It was hardly his fault.”
“Oh, hell. I said ‘of the day,’ and the day’s almost up. I’ll find someone else tomorrow. Besides, what I think doesn’t matter much anyway.”
I cupped my ear. “What’s this? Violin music time?”
He glanced at me and shook his head. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m getting sick and tired of being the resident lame duck.”
“No one listening anymore?”
“Oh, they listen. They just don’t pay much attention. I know what’s going through their minds: if we just stall him long enough, he’ll be gone and we can forget about it. I can’t say I blame them. It’s just a lousy way to wrap things up. I’ve given those bastards a lot of good time.”
He leaned forward and turned up the volume a bit. The sports report was beginning-Frank’s idea of heaven.
As slow as he had become, his insight hadn’t suffered any. He was right about what people were thinking. He was retiring in four months, after thirty-five years on the force; it was the last chance a lot of folks had to subtly let him know they weren’t heartbroken.
I thought that stank. He was a good cop and a better friend. When I came out of Korea, I was twenty years old and scarred by something nobody wanted to hear about. Korea was the “action” between the Good War-World War II-and the Living Room War-Vietnam. We had racked up almost as many casualties in three years as they had during ten years in Vietnam. The Vietvets complained that people spat at them when they got back home; most of us didn’t stimulate even that much attention.
Also, warfare had revealed sides of humanity I’d never dreamed of, g Cdreem" rowing up in the hills of Thetford, Vermont. I’d witnessed extremes of boredom and action, of cowardice and foolhardy bravery, of viciousness and grace. I’d been touched by an experience so concentrated and searing that my former life, beckoning from my father’s farm, no longer seemed possible.
I floated for a while, utterly at sea. I was decommissioned in California, so I stayed there and spent a few years going to college in Berkeley. That was when the Beat movement was just beginning to stir, a phenomenon that filled my suitcase with some pretty strange books and all but finished the metamorphosis of one erstwhile farm boy, but it still hadn’t settled my mind one bit. So I quit and came back home, hoping something might switch me back on track.
But I’d become rootless, frustrated and alienated, and Vermont’s green hills did little to soothe. That’s when Murphy rounded me up. He was older by nine years, a veteran not only of Korea, but of World War II. I’d known him earlier; he’d been reared nearby in Ely, an older brother of sorts to a lot of kids my age-or if not a brother, then a cousin maybe-the only teenager in the area to have fought overseas and killed people and won medals. He listened to boys my age, and some girls too, I imagine, with a wisdom and sympathy we couldn’t find in the adult world. And he managed to track me down after California, although by that time he lived in Brattleboro, some seventy-five miles to the south. To this day, I’m not sure how or why he did that. I have the sneaky suspicion that my mother may have called him.
In any case, he got me interested in the police force he’d been on for several years already. It mimicked some of the more pleasant aspects of military life-that combination of specialness and fraternity-and it replaced the muddiness of my life with the welcomed rigidity of rank, paperwork and assigned tasks. It also meant carrying a gun-the ultimate symbol of the simple answer to a complex world-and it gave me a chance, every once in a while, to do something which by that time in my life was becoming an elusive quality. Korea and California had fouled the clear moral waters of my upbringing and had left me nostalgic for the innocent idealism of my younger years.
During my first weeks as a Brattleboro cop, I thought I’d finally found the solution. I was to walk the line between the good guys and the bad, keeping one from being done in by the other. Real Lone Ranger stuff, complete with silver bullets, or at least close enough. The fact that I started out directing traffic and ticketing cars didn’t matter. I was a Lawman-the armed instrument of Might and Right.
Not that Murphy instilled that simple-minded notion in my brain. That was my own doing, and I was quickly disabused. The younger, probably wiser Murphy showed me that most bad guys were usually regular joes with a screw loose-barring a few exceptions. But even while I was reluctantly conceding that the world was more gray than black and white, its complexities and contradictions stopped bothering me as much. The gun lost its appeal as I began to rely more on my instincts than on its authority. I came to see it finally as the unreal thing it is: the admission of your brain’s collapse under panic and impotent rage. For that personal growth-even rebirth-I had Frank Murphy to thank.
The wide-eyed awe I had for him during those early years died the same peaceful death as my polarized view of human nature. But it, like the latter, was replaced by something more realistic and worthy. I came to love Frank as a fellow flawed human bein Ced, lg, with whom I could disagree and argue and yet always respect. It rankled me to see him being kicked around by those who only saw his crusty armor.
“There’s no reason not to leave now, you know. The benefits aren’t going to change any.”
He pushed his lips out in a pout. “I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. I said I’d leave May first, I’ll leave May first.”
I wasn’t going to argue with that. It was damned near the only thing he had left.
“When are you going to call it quits?” he asked, his eyes still on the screen.
“I still have almost ten years to go before full benefits.”
“You don’t really need them, do you?”
I wasn’t sure where he was headed. “It wouldn’t hurt. Seems a small price to pay after all this time. I might as well do it right and get what’s coming, even if it is a mouse fart.”
He didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. His total concentration seemed focused on whether Pepsi or Coke would win the taste test. “You want to make captain.”
It wasn’t an accusation, nor was it a question. It just floated there, and given my druthers, I might have let it drift away. Instead, I gave it some serious thought for the first time. Another ad passed and the weather girl appeared. She’d changed her hair-made her look like a poodle. “I don’t know. Maybe. You don’t get out much; I’d miss that. I don’t want to end up playing footsie with the selectmen and the chief, and figuring out everyone’s schedule. I hate that stuff.”
“It has its compensations… I can’t think of them, but they’re there. They told me so.” He got up and fixed himself another drink. “There’s something to be said for going as high as you can go. It feels pretty good. And you can get out if you don’t like it.”
“Well, hell, I might as well shoot for chief then.”
Frank chuckled and settled back on the couch. The report was more snow tomorrow. I’d never aired my ambitions before, probably because they weren’t much to talk about-the Brattleboro Police Department was hardly overloaded with roads to the top. But with Frank’s impending departure, that would change. I was next in line, the docs all said I had a body ten years younger than my age-despite the penchant for Velveeta and pickle sandwiches-and I was in no trouble with the powers that be. I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but the thought of new responsibilities was very attractive.
Frank’s voice cut in on my musings, in more ways than one. “How about coming down to Florida with Martha and me? We might could set up a business or something.”
That caught me by surprise. In the past, during the bad times we’d shared, we’d both thought of leaving the force and doing something else. But that had been pure escapism, a safe way to let off steam. This was different. Despite the fact that his eyes were still glued to the tube, he was making a serious proposal-or at least sending up a trial balloon-and that put me in a jam. Not only was I still happy doing what I was doing, I also knew in my gut I couldn’t work with Ct he tube, hFrank in any other circumstance. Time, age, and self-abuse were catching up to him, widening the nine-year gap between us and making it a chasm. In many ways, he had evolved from a near brother to a near father, at least in the way he had aged. Of all the things I wanted least to do in my life, watching Frank Murphy disintegrate in retirement was the most repellent.
That pissed me off. He had helped me out when I was on the ropes, both after Korea and California and after Ellen’s death. The least I could do was keep him company for a few years in Florida. But I wasn’t going to do it, even to put a new wind in his sails. The irony of our relationship was that he had taught me to stand on my own two feet-to look to myself before seeking the guidance of others. It was that education that was making me turn my back now.
“Why Florida?”
“Martha. It turns out that our entire married life, she’s hated the winters here.”
“But she was born in Vermont.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? She has the heart of a beach bunny. Going to live in Florida after I retire is the eleventh of her Ten Commandments. I can’t say no; she’s put up with me through a lot. I told her it was her call, no arguments.”
“Do you know where you’ll go?”
“Yeah.” He glanced over at me and smiled. “Surprised, huh? You thought you knew everything.” The smile faded and he took a long swallow from his glass. “Maybe I was hoping that if I didn’t mention it, it might go away. It’s not too far from St. Petersburg-a trailer park, but fancy. You’d never guess to look at it. It’s near the water, has a bunch of tennis courts, a pool, stuff like that. It’s okay.”
His voice was as flat as a board. If I’d had any doubts before, they were gone now. “I couldn’t do it, Frank. Florida’s not my style.”
He leaned forward and punched the television off with a hard stab of his thumb. “Well, hell, I’m not surprised. Just thought I’d offer. You might have been nuts enough to say yes.”
“What are you going to do down there? Do you know anybody?”
“Naw. I suppose I’ll fish. There’s a lot of that down there. And suntans. I might work on one of those. There’s stuff to do-I just have to go down and find out about it.” He got up and freshened his drink and brought another bottle of tonic water over to me. “So what do you got on your mind? You didn’t come over here to shoot the shit.”
I was more inclined to shoot the shit than he thought, but I respected his wish to change the subject. “I want to dig into the Harris case.”
I sensed a palpable stiffening, fully expected. “Why?”
“Because somebody else already has. It’s pretty evident Reitz, Phillips, and Wodiska were set up; I want to find out why.”
His face darkened and he opened his mouth to say something but then closed it again. “Got any theories?” His voice was forcefully neutral, if that’s possible. I sensed he was doling out just enough rope for me to hang myself. hat="0em" width="1em" align="left"›“Not really. Maybe it’s revenge against the jury by some friend of Davis’s, or maybe one of the jury is after all the others. Or one is the target and the rest are a smoke screen. For damn sure the one man who stood out during the trial, and who dragged his feet when it came to convicting, is the only one dead so far.”
“And what’s that tell you?”
“Not a thing.”
Murphy had been standing through all this, and he now settled in to his favorite position on the couch. “You weren’t here when we busted Davis, were you?”
I shook my head. “I was on vacation, but I was here for all the rest.”
“Seems to me a man who has to be held in solitary confinement for his own protection would have a rough time rounding up friends to settle his scores for him.”
“Why’s he in solitary?”
“Because in this state, he’s on the far side of the moon. There’s not a guy in that jail who doesn’t want to take a poke at him just for the novelty of it. I mean, let’s face it, where else are they going to be able to mess with a black guy? Last I heard, they’d left turds on his pillow, torn his mattress, destroyed his property, and given him as much trouble as they could get away with. Compared to that, solitary’s probably like vacation.”
I was impressed with Frank’s knowledge. A man in prison was no concern of ours, and to find out about him, you had to go out of your way. Frank obviously had done just that, and I was curious to know why. “What’s he still doing in Vermont? Shouldn’t he be in some federal can by now?”
“Red tape. Maybe it’s crowding or something. I do know the locals would love to get rid of him.”
“Where’s he being held?”
“Woodstock.”
“How do you know all this?” He looked over at me. “Captain’s prerogative.” He paused, I was hoping to say more, but instead he turned to the television and punched it on again. A Muppet was being shot through a cannon.
“You gotten any word on the insurance angle yet-for Phillips’s grieving widow?”
“Yeah. He had life-a hundred thousand dollars. That’s not much considering his assets.”
“Which were?”
“Almost a million. I don’t think there’s anything there, like I said before.”
“What about Reitz’s neighbors? Anyone see anything?”
“They don’t even admit to hearing the shotgun blast.”
“And Reitz’s daughter. What about her?”
“I don’t know. What about her?”
“The report said they didn’t get along. Did you interview her?”
“Not yet.”
“How about everyone living on and around Estabrook? Did any one see Woll get mugged?”
“Not that they admit.”
“How about the guy with the mask?”
“Nope.”
“Did you ask Woll if he’d pissed anyone off recently?”
“No. I will, though.”
The television was turned off again, and Murphy looked at me. “So you think the guy who rousted Woll is the same guy who arranged for Reitz to kill Phillips, and that he did all that because he wanted to draw attention to the Kimberly Harris case. Is that right?”
“It’s a possibility-the jury connection goes beyond coincidence; at least I think so.” I could feel my palms begin to sweat. Murphy’s questions were making me angry, as was his implication that I wasn’t doing the job properly.
“It’s also a possibility that Reitz’s daughter hates her guts, that Mrs. Phillips has had enough of the dog-lover, or that Woll rubbed some guy the wrong way, maybe even Henry Wodiska. Do we have anything besides his word that he spent the night where he said he did?”
“Of course. We checked where he works. We have done this kind of thing before, Frank.”
“Well, we better start showing it. Did you see tonight’s news? At six o’clock?”
I shook my head.
“They carried the Reitz shooting. Not much, but the ball’s beginning to roll. If we don’t do something fast, we’re going to get buried. The way I see it, we’ve got enough on our hands finding the guy who made Reitz pull that trigger without digging up old news.”
“Is that a subtle way of telling me not to touch the Harris thing?”
His eyes narrowed. “Where’d you get that bullshit? I’m just being helpful. Isn’t that why you came over?”
I didn’t answer, much as I was tempted. Slowly he turned away and took another swig from his glass. He looked suddenly deflated. “It’s been a long day. Do what you have to do, Joe, but keep it under your hat and make damn sure you keep your priorities in order. A lot of people in the department were happy to see Davis go down. If they find out you’re digging into that stuff, you’re going to start feeling the heat, even if you can tie it together with what’s on our plate now. And if the press gets the slightest whiff of it, we’ll never hear the end of it. Have you told everyone to keep their mouths shut?”
“I think I convinced Wodiska. Woll’s the only one I can order. Will you back me up on Harris?” He paused before answering. “I’m not here for long; they know that. My backing isn’t going to be worth diddly.”
“Will you do it anyway?”
“You haven’t convinced me yet. As far as I’m concerned, the guy who set up the Reitz-Phillips thing and Woll’s mugger are two separate people, and neither one has anything to do with Harris.”
I rose and returned my half-empty glass to the bar. “All right.” I put my coat back on and headed for the hallway. “See you tomorrow, Frank.”
“Hey.” I turned around, and he hoisted his glass at me. “I’ll be thinking about you in Florida.”
“Sure.” I hated to admit it, but right now part of me wished he was already there.